This is where the film becomes magical. Either because this town is gifted with a degree of human kindness that only exists in fables or because they are so smart as to intuitively realize how desperately Lars needs human contact but knows not how to seek it, and because they truly love and care for Lars, the entire town embraces Bianca, the plastic blowup doll.

My son, Julius, kept saying that it was a town full of losers because they support the fantasy that Lars so desperately needs to keep from absolutely losing touch. But Julius has never felt the emptiness of the absence of love. Affection is easy for him because he is a miracle of another sort. I hope he never feels the loss and abandonment of love leaving. But, inevitably he will. Then he will be grateful for the sweetness and the kindness of a film like "Lars and the Real Girl."

Therefore, I don't think Ryan Gosling was angling for an Academy Award when he agreed to do this film. Based on the other unique choices he has made in his career, from playing a skin-head, anti-Semitic Jew in "The Believer," to the crack addicted teacher, to the painfully shy and beautifully sweet Lars, I think he is just searching around, as any really good actor will, for the most interesting and challenging roles he can find in order to deepen his understanding of humankind and set a finer edge to the knowledge of his own existence.

THE BIG LEBOWSKI (1998)

Everyone should watch "The Big Lebowski" at least once. I don't usually like movies by the Coen brothers. I feel like they live and work in a gated community and I live outside the gate. There is an "I-get-it-and-you-don't" quality to their humor. They are not quite willing to cop to their own innocence and so they miss a sense of wonder and the ability to be surprised.

"The Big Lebowski" lives on that insider humor. The three performances at the center are so perfectly in tune with each other that whenever they decide to go bowling, you feel the comfort of home, be it ever so dysfunctional.

John Goodman's outraged Vietnam vet never relents. Jeff Bridges as the Dude is the stoner I certainly was hoping to be, but never got quite lost enough to become. And Steve Buscemi, as Donny, caught in the middle and content not to quite keep up -- but available for anything his friends need him for -- is the ideal dumping ground for Goodman's rage and Bridge's frustration.

The three together are a perfect harmony. I don't like saying it, but I will watch it repeatedly, so I guess I must like it. I just wish I could watch it one time from inside the gates.